Elizabeth Olsen’s performance is way too good for HBO Max's soapy true crime drama LoveAndDeath. Our review:
At this point in her career, I will watch Elizabeth Olsen do pretty much anything. She’s a grieving widow in? I am crying with her. She’s a badass superhero in any one of like four different Avengers movies? I am in the front row. Oh, whoops, she’s now suddenly a comic book supervillain in, but I stand ready to defend women’s wrongs. She’s playing an…ax murderer? Um, okay, I guess?
This is a lot to say that Olsen is the primary reason anyone is going to bother to watch the new Max drama, a prestige true crime piece based on a grisly real-life murder in a small Texas town in 1980 that has already seen several onscreen adaptations .
Her interior life, however, is less satisfying, and the series’ initial episodes poke listlessly at Candy’s general unhappiness without ever really giving a reason for her ennui. And the same ultimately can be said for her affair with Allan Gore —a chance close encounter on the volleyball court leads to her basically propositioning him on what honestly feels like a whim.
Even for fans, true crime can be a tough genre to navigate—after all, these are real people’s stories being dissected, reimagined, and repurposed for the enjoyment of viewers whose lives the violence depicted within them will never really touch. It’s easy enough to become desensitized to the idea that this is simply entertainment like anything else, which is perhaps all the more reason wetake the responsibility of telling these stories seriously and treat their subjects with care.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter
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